Julia Palmer. The Centuries of Julia Palmer.

Eds. Victoria Burke and Elizabeth R. Clarke. Nottingham: Trent Editions, 2001. xxvi + 362 pp. gloss. 9.99 [pounds sterling]. ISBN: 1-84233-061-6.

Julia Palmer's Centuries, two sequences of one hundred religious lyrics each, add a welcome new voice to the relatively sparse collections we have of lyrics by seventeenth-century, middle-class women. Editors Victoria Burke and Elizabeth Clarke attribute her manuscript's survival to its dedication to two prominent London apothecaries. They pursue clues to Palmer's identity, family ties, and religious alignment through directories of learned societies, parish records, and state papers to place her in London during a crucial two years, 1671-73, in the Restoration context of the Declaration of Indulgence (1672) and during the years in which the Crown sought the cooperation of dissenters in tolerating a war with the Dutch. Although they must rely on conjecture at times, their conclusions are convincing.

The editors connect Palmer and her dedicatees to the Presbyterian congregation of Thomas Cawton, a minister permitted to hold services near Westminster during a period that the Five Mile Act kept other dissenters distant from Parliament. They also relate tensions reflected in the Tory Anglicans' endeavor to win support for a Dutch conflict to allusions present in some of Palmer's verses. The most interesting and, in some ways the most controversial sections of the introduction, address Palmer's spiritual convictions and her contribution to the writing of devotional lyrics, especially those intended for singing.

In spiritual orientation "She is a strong Calvinist, a theology typical of Presbyterianism" (viii), Elizabeth Clarke writes, suggesting that Palmer uses the language of the Bible as well as that of the devotional tracts of her times. In particular, the editors mention the doctrines of free grace, double predestination, and a covenant relationship with God in which the believer surrenders herself to God, receiving strength to live a holy life. Here they need to concede that many of these beliefs are not confined to Presbyterianism but have characterized earlier groups of Anglicans and, in the case of ordinances, Baptists who accepted only the ordinances of the Lord's Supper and baptism instituted in the New Testament. They also cite one woman contemporary to Palmer on the importance for women of keeping spiritual journals each day to record one's daily experience in living a holy life. Their association of Palmer's verse with that of other women, such as Dorothy Leigh, whose "A Mother's Blessing" was accompanied by women's lyrics, is valuable, but they could look even more directly at the broad early modern tradition of religious works by women of all educational levels including such Calvinists as Anne Lok and Lucy Hutchinson.

While the definitions of strong Nonconformist beliefs help a reader who has nor been reading large amounts of early modern literature, the editors could assist readers encountering Protestant poetics for the first time by suggesting a broader context. Within the immediate period following the Restoration, their allusions to spiritual work are meticulous, yet many beliefs they explain have long histories, specifically the metaphor of spiritual warfare and the spousal relationship of Christ and the church. Further, written records of personal and spiritual progress were not confined to women.

The two sets of one hundred poems each are quite clearly presented and are accompanied by notes regarding biblical references, similar images in George Herbert's poetry, and allusions to the political and religious issues of the time. Seventeenth-century sectarian religious terms are clarified, and some topical allusions explained. As a reader I prefer "word" or "term" to the editors' frequent "Nonconformist jargon," but the terms are new to a present-day reader.

Although Julia Palmer's individual poems may contain a few awkwardnesses, they pick up the ballad rhythms and four-line rhymes of so many favorite Protestant hymns some readers may recognize. Not everyone will agree that "to assign her poetry an importance outside of its literary historical significance will require the deployment of rather different literary critical paradigms than are usually in use in seventeenth-century research" (xx). Nearly every poem records a kind of progression or contrast in mood. Several groups of readers can benefit from the sequence. Certainly Julia Palmer's work is invaluable to students of early modern women. To find two hundred poems from a middle-class woman that might otherwise have been lost--and to make them understandable to a modern reader--is a major achievement. Another asset is Palmer's place in the afterlife of George Herbert's poetry as it was taken up by dissenters for meditation and singing. Also, as Elizabeth Clarke notes in her discussion of Palmer and Isaac Watts, Palmer's work is significant in the history of sacred lyric.

Victoria Burke and Elizabeth Clarke have done students of the seventeenth century, early modern women, and of early hymn-writing an irreplaceable service in their work on Julia Palmer. In spite of this reader's wish to read more, they take up their subject with the accuracy and clarity all of us need to appreciate this welcome addition to teaching and further study.

MARGARET J. ARNOLD

The University of Kansas